Learning and Planning

Planning ahead….due to sudden shifts, new phase of life had begun. Planning ahead… not really! Just going with the flow. I know that I cannot control time and most things are outside my control.

However, despite that I can still plan ahead in small ways. Looking forward to starting new adventures. It may take me some time to get there but that’s what I am planning for. Riding motorbikes for me is thrilling and adventurous. So, the first adventure that I am planning on is setting out on a motorbike tour.

Why am I sharing it? When I  am not even close to it yet? Do I believe in law of attraction? Write down your goals and recite them before sleeping each night and as you wake up every morning. They shall soon come to pass!

Not really!

I do know that goals written down have much more meaning and for some reason I am a little more determined to fulfill them.

Just like my endless thirst for seeking out knowledge. I write down goals and work towards them. But let me tell you, I have encountered more failures so far than successes. You may wonder what those might be, as an example, learning languages for me is exciting, stimulating and fun. Yet, I am still a beginner after many years spending time to learn German, Persian and Arabic. The truth is my effort has never been deliberate and focused enough to learn one of them and get good at it. Yet I am fascinated by people when I hear different languages. If I could fluently speak in a different language, the conversations could help me explore different cultures and ideas too.

There are so many things that I would like to learn but if prioritise them appropriately, the skills and knowledge gained will be of future benefit both in building career and life. My current focus is building on these valuable skills while keeping up with other hobbies at a minimum to remain consistent and not losing those skills. 5 mins of German a day, 5 mins of Arabic a day. Persian??? I will go back to it when I start reading Rumi and Iqbal again.

I have been neglecting the practice of martial arts. I have been hiking a lot lately, but not enough exercise and sweat doing that on its own. Yesterday, I ran, the plan was to jog 4 miles. I only managed to jog 2 miles, and even that alternating between jogging and walking each mile. It’s easy to lose skills too if they are not kept honed. Martial arts may be one example, excel or a programming language maybe another.

The point is, it is important to make time to sharpen one’s skills and keep up with them. Martial arts and teaching it is part of that planning ahead. So, while I wait on things to materialise, I got to keep practising so my movements remain fluent.

I have never walked a linear path. If I were a molecule in a beaker full of liquid. The brownian motion would pretty much describe my path so far, despite such haphazard path, I am still contained in a beaker so I am able to maintain my goals in sight. Maybe not the best way to describe it but this is how I have been able to keep sight of my goals. If I were to lose myself in an ocean, I might just lose myself. The ocean is vast, full of sharks and creatures of the deep sea. Navigating through all of that might be even tougher, but I believe planning, practice, and sticking to my game plan will be crucial when it’s finally time to immerse my being in the depths of oceans.

I am going to stop the rambling now, it’s been a a whole month since I last wrote anything on here. It feels even longer. It’s not that I don’t enjoy writing, I just have to get better at managing my time. This weekend it has all been about creating a routine that will help me be more productive and writing it down so I can start following it.

What do I talk about when I talk about balance?

One of my starting posts on this blog site was about Balance.

As I write this blog, I want to reflect on balance once more. What do I talk about when I talk about balance? Rather, imagining balance once more.

To summarise my previous blog, if you don’t feel like clicking on the link above or here, I wrote about emotions felt as a result of imbalance. I then, presented 2 ways of dealing with this imbalance to find balance. 1) Solution oriented approach 2) Getting at the root causes approach. I then added a bit of wisdom from one of my favourite characters uncle Iroh. Wish he was my real uncle lol 😆

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Uncle Iroh’s wisdom bombs.

Here’s another one of my favourites

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I could just post all the Uncle Iroh’s pins and end this blog. But let me reflect on balance 🤔

Hope and strength is what you give yourself in dark times. That is the true meaning of strength. This is another one of Uncle Iroh’s quotes. I wanted to expand on hope.

What is hope? If I take no action towards my goals, can I hope to reach them?

If I refuse to change my habits or set ways, can I still hope for a better future?

True hope is having done the work, put in the effort and then hoping for the best. But the temporal nature of this life is such that, amidst this true hope, we can fall victim to other vices that can create imbalance within us.

An example, I write this blog for my self-development, reflections and sharing it so that, others who can relate to my thoughts can perhaps find benefit from it. But then, I start getting big headed and start thinking that I am wise and start boasting about my work and knowledge. This results in arrogance and the kind of arrogance whose roots can grab hold of the thinking, ‘that I am better than others’.

I prefer relating examples to myself because I don’t want to mention anybody else. It’s simple to use myself as an example, it’s also an antidote to keep a check on myself. It’s also a way to keep humble and knowing whether any of these vices taint my mind and/or heart.

While not with this blog, I have surely tried to get ahead of myself in other endeavours. Not thinking of myself better than others, but rather over exaggerating my skills in my own mind. This is also arrogance. Arrogance that makes me forget gratitude. Arrogance that makes me break my rules. Arrogance that causes me to praise myself and think how good I am because of my recent streak, processes and actions. Failing to acknowledge the real cause of my skills and failure to remain humble. Forgetting that all the skills, wisdom, intelligence, good habits that I have gained at all points is attributed to God alone. What I am trying to say is that ‘True Hope’ is having hope in the ‘Divine Decree’, on the condition that I do my best, put in the effort and then hope to not fall into the traps of my ego and whims. Hope to fall in love with the repeatable process to make it my instinct. Hope to improve so I can systematise it. Or better yet, another one of uncle Iroh’s quotes would fit well here.

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Get help from others in areas where you are weak. Doing this over and over, you can start to see some of your blind spots. You can start to see your learnt behaviours and patterns.

I am going to pivot away from all the talk and reflection and finish this by saying, what can help me the most is being comfortable with uncertainty. It is indeed difficult to be patient over something that you don’t have knowledge of, or control. And what helps to be comfortable is meditation. It works well so long as I am not neglecting others areas and aspects of life. It is difficult to move forward keeping everything in balance. Especially when balance is frail in the first place 😅…. even then balance, contentment, equanimity can be achieved via staying and living in the present.

ps. I got the idea for the title from Haruki Murakami’s memoir ‘What I talk about when I talk about running.’

Progress and Action

My 2 good habits that I have managed to be consistent with, since the lockdown started are: Meditation and  Exercise.

I started by doing 20 push-ups a day and meditating every morning. Since last summer, I had been very inconsistent with practising martial arts or doing exercise. Perhaps going to counselling and showing up for the sessions kept me weighed down. During the whole process, I was listening to audiobooks, podcasts and watching YT videos as an escape. Escape because, my time was mostly filled by listening to fictional novels from some of my favourite authors. With the start of 2020 and having finished with counselling sessions, I wanted to re-implement some of the good habits that have stuck with me throughout difficult times. The two being meditation and exercise! It’s always these two that help me find balance and reorganise my mind.

This Spring with lockdown in place I tried a new combination of meditation followed by exercise for 90 days… I skipped a few days here and there. Skipped either am or pm session. It didn’t go as I planned, however, I managed to develop these habits back into my daily routine with greater consistency. I was meant to update my daily log of accountability but I really found that a chore lol. Still I started by doing 20 push-ups right after a meditation session. Usually I like meditating after an intense workout and emptying my mind and just sitting with myself observing and enhancing the focus and emptiness… this time, I was meditating first and to reward myself (the brain) I was doing push-ups. The idea being that my brain needs dopamine and endorphins released to feel pleasure and for the habit to stick. I can say that it worked really well. I also went from doing 20 push-ups to 50 push-ups. Then changed it up to 100 push-ups a day (5 sets × 20 reps).  Now, I have brought another slight change and started to lift weights too. The day I don’t lift weights, I do 100 push-ups. The other days I lift. I still maintain my focus on core strength and flexibility because I want to keep my taekwondo skills up to par.

Why am I sharing this? I can keep carrying on quietly and do what I am doing. My reasons for sharing are simple, everyone goes through different life challenges. You never know what others may find inspirational. I am not really going to post pictures up lol because I hardly take pictures. I don’t have a habit of taking selfies or pictures. So sadly, I don’t have the skinny me before and some after gains haha… The idea behind sharing this is that, you can start no matter your level, start with habits that you want to develop and stick with them, challenge yourself, hold yourself accountable through social media posts or through a friend. Become consistent, do a little bit everyday, rather than not doing anything at all.

Personally for me, consistency matters a lot. If I am able to stay consistent with my habits… hopefully it filters through to other aspects of life too and become consistent with everything I want to do and plan to do. Focussing on the process, not the outcome. The next steps for me are filling in the daily report card with consistency. To see what I am referring to check out these previous posts:

http://macropassions.com/2020/04/05/how-to-motivate-yourself-to-sustain-your-productivity/

http://macropassions.com/2020/02/29/leap-progress-process/

I want this progress and action to filter into my process and auction too.

Until next time,

Put in those reps